The present invention relates to firearm systems, to apparatus and methods of making and using such systems, and to apparatus and methods of making and using individual sub-systems and components employed in such systems.
The most frequently used class of firearms employed by law enforcement agencies is semi-automatic handguns such as 9 mm or 38-caliber semi-automatic weapons. Standard in those weapons are thumb and grip, manually operated, button and/or trigger safeties which hinder unintentional firearm discharges. Such mechanisms are almost universally employed to provide a modicum of insurance against unintentional discharge of the weapon. A thumb safety operates by manually shifting the safety lever from its xe2x80x9csafexe2x80x9d position to its xe2x80x9cfirexe2x80x9d position. A grip safety is automatically shifted to its xe2x80x9cfirexe2x80x9d position when the user""s hand engages the stock or handle of the weapon. Neither of those safety mechanisms is wholly effective to prevent the unauthorized use of a firearm, and both have proven unsatisfactory in dealing with a variety of safety concerns.
One area of safety concern is the complete prevention of accidental discharge of weapons so as to avoid unintentional injuries or death. Another safety concern involves weapons, which come into the reach of children or inexperienced firearm users, which are accidentally or improperly discharged, resulting in death or serious injury. Further, a great concern of law enforcement officials is the unfortunate occurrence where a law enforcement officer is shot or killed with the officer""s own service weapon. Such incidents most often occur during an attempted arrest of a violent suspect who gains control of the officer""s service weapon and then uses it against him.
Persons such as police officers, security guards and correctional facility officers typically carry a firearm for their own protection as well as the protection of others. Such persons are continually exposed to situations where potential assailants must be physically confronted or detained. During the process of being confronted or detained, potential assailants may have the chance to wrest the officer""s firearm away from him. The officer then faces the risk that the assailant will use his own firearm against him.
Some sobering statistics for the United States bring light to the breadth and depth of the problems described above. An average of about 16% of all police officers shot each year are shot with their own weapons. Fifteen thousand suicides are committed using firearms each year. At least 500 accidental firearm-related deaths of children occur each year. Seventy-one law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in 1991. Firearms were used in 68 of those slayings, including 8 (11.4%) in which officers were killed with their own service weapons.
Adding to the problems caused by unauthorized use of firearms is the sheer number of firearms now in use in the United States, exacerbating further the general acuteness of the problem. For example, the 1993 census showed that 43% of all households admitted to owning firearms, meaning that at least 105 million firearms are now in civilian hands. One and a half million persons employed by private security firms have access to firearms. It is estimated that nearly four million firearms are employed nationwide by police and sheriff""s departments, correctional facilities, fire departments, wildlife and forestry management agencies, the FBI, Federal Marshals, Military Police and the Secret Service.
Several safety arrangements have been suggested to make firearms safer. Most such safety arrangements may be classified as follows: (a) mechanically operated lock devices for disabling a weapon; (b) magnetically operated lock devices for disabling a weapon; (c) electronic remote control devices having a separate controlling transmitter and a receiver located on the firearm for disabling a weapon; (d) mechanical combination key lock devices for disabling a weapon; (e) electronically programmable key lock devices for disabling a weapon; (f) audio verification programmable key lock devices for disabling a weapon; (g) fingerprint verification programmable key lock devices for disabling a weapon, and (h) mechanical means for preventing the loading of ammunition into a weapon. Safety arrangements other than the foregoing also have been suggested.
Most firearm safety and control arrangements suggested heretofore have certain drawbacks or disadvantages, including: (a) a need to make substantial or expensive modifications or changes to the firearm prior to the fitting of the safety arrangement; (b) an inability to enable the safety arrangement of the firearm quickly when the firearm is in the possession of an authorized user; (c) unreliability in actual use; (d) an inability to retrofit the safety arrangement in an existing firearm; (e) an inability to retrofit the safety arrangement in a plurality of types of existing firearms: (f) an inability of an authorized user to remove the safety arrangement installed in the firearm in a cost-effective manner, if so desired; (g) the need to carry a physical key for insertion into the firearm to enable the firearm, thereby lengthening the amount of time required for an authorized user to enable the firearm; (h) ammunition disposed inside the firearm that still may be accessed by an unauthorized user, even when the trigger or hammer mechanism is disabled; and (i) safety arrangements that are complicated to use or implement.
Safety and control arrangements for firearm systems, components and methods are well known in the art, some examples of which may be found in the issued U.S. Patents listed in Table 1 below.
Particular attention is directed to the following prior art patents: U.S. Pat. No. 3,939,679 to Barker et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,003,152 to Barker et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,154,014 to Smith; U.S. Pat. No. 4,189,712 to Lemelson; U.S. Pat. No. 4,354,189 to Lemelson; U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,370 to Lemelson; U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,376 to Pugh; U.S. Pat. No. 5,062.232 to Eppler; U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,114 to Enget; U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,828 to Petrick et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,495 to Harthcock; U.S. Pat. No. 5,459,957 to Winer; U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,812 to Bennett; U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,925 to Wurger and U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,153 to Kaminski et al. Prior art references other than those highlighted in this paragraph may also be of particular relevance to the present invention.
Those of skill in the art will appreciate readily upon reading the Summary of the Invention, Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiments and Claims set forth below, that at least some of the systems, components, devices and methods disclosed in the patents of Table 1 may be modified advantageously in accordance with the teachings of the present invention.
The present invention has certain objects. That is, the present invention provides solutions to many problems existing in the prior art respecting safety and control arrangements for firearm systems, components and methods. Known firearm safety arrangements or systems suffer from various problems, including one or more of firearm safety and/or control arrangements or systems, and/or components, subsystems, elements or methods thereof that (a) do not prevent unauthorized persons, including criminals or children, from discharging firearms; (b) may not be retrofitted in an existing firearm and therefore require an entirely new weapon; (c) require extensive, time-consuming or costly modifications to an existing firearm; (d) may be employed in only one particular type of firearm; (e) are irreversible in a firearm once implemented; (f) contain needlesly complicated and elaborate mechanisms or electronics; (g) are failure-prone; (h) not accepted or trusted by law enforcement agencies; (i) are permitted to operate or be employed only in a law enforcement context; (j) do not permit standard methodologies or practices respecting weapon use to be employed; (k) do not permit a user to selectively control important parameters or functions of the system or arrangement; (l) are difficult or expensive to manufacture; (m) are bulky or unwieldy, resulting in a firearm that may be impractical or difficult to use in a law enforcement setting where effective concealment and holster use of a firearm may be required; (n) require time-consuming or elaborate operation procedures; (o) are characterized in having slow device reaction times; (p) are noisy in operation and therefore hinder concealment; (q) require a bulky or unwieldy device to be worn or attached to an intended or authorized firearm user; (r) may be used for a short period of time only before battery recharging or replacement is required; (s) do not acquire, collect or store data respecting firearm use; (t) cannot withstand harsh environmental conditions; (u) cannot be disabled by remote control, and (v) cannot be disabled or enabled in the event of an electrical power failure or other malfunction. Various embodiments of the present invention have the object of solving at least some of the foregoing problems.
In comparison to known firearm safety and control arrangements and/or systems, subsystems, components, elements and/or methods thereof, various embodiments of the present invention provide numerous advantages, including one or more of: (a) preventing unauthorized persons, including criminals or children, from discharging a firearm; (b) being easily retrofittable in a variety of different types of existing firearms; (c) being affordable, economically feasible or cost effective for many different types of potential users; (d) being completely separable from a firearm; (e) being usable in a wide variety of different types of firearms; (f) having simple, reliable and robust mechanisms and methods; (g) permitting a user to employ a familiar trusted firearm; (h) being usable by both law enforcement agencies and civilians; (i) having one or more user-defined or customizable functional parameters; (j) being manufacturable using relatively straightforward and well known manufacturing and fabrication methods; (k) permitting use without compromising or interfering with concealment or holster requirements; (l) permitting quiet, immediate safety and/or control system, subsystem, element or component enabling or disabling; (m) having a small, light-weight, unobtrusive, readily concealed, low-maintenance local or remote external enabling and/or communication device worn, attached to or positioned near or remotely from an authorized weapon user; (n) permitting use over a relatively long period of time before battery recharging or replacement is required; (o) permitting the acquisition and/or storage of data respecting firearm use; (p) permitting the uploading, transfer or telemetry of data, either stored or transferred in real time or otherwise, respecting firearm use to an external device or system, either by remote or in-situ control; (q) permitting data relating to a firearm, such as user I.D., location, time, number of shots fired, direction or orientation of shots fired, etc., to be transferred to one or more external devices or locations for storage and/or analysis; (r) permitting an authorized user to employ a small, easily-concealed, low-maintenance device which enables or disables firing of a firearm; (s) permitting a firearm""s physical location to be remotely pinpointed, approximated or monitored; (t) functioning reliably and effectively under harsh environmental conditions, and (u) permitting mechanical override of disabled but normally electrically enabled or disabled functions.
Various embodiments of the present invention have certain features, or physical or functional characteristics, including a firearm safety and/or control arrangement or system, sub-system, component, element or method having one or more of: (a) a magazine that may be retrofitted in an existing firearm, and which replaces the firearm""s original equipment magazine while requiring little or no modification of the firearm frame or body; (b) a firearm frame or body configured to receive a safety magazine of the present invention; (c) a safety magazine; (d) a mobile or stationary external local enabling and/or communication device, external to the firearm frame or body, and preferably comprising one or more of a transceiver, a transponder, an antenna, a sensor, a Hall Effect sensor, a magnet and a coil; (d) a mobile or stationary external remote enabling and/or communication device, external to the firearm frame or body, and preferably comprising one or more of a transceiver, a transponder, an antenna, a sensor, a Hall Effect sensor, a magnet, a coil, a satellite, a broadcast antenna, and an antenna; (e) a first motion translation mechanism; (f) a second motion translation mechanism; (g) a motion generation device; (h) an interference member having an interference surface or portion which blocks or disables operation of at least one firing control mechanism disposed in a firearm; (l) a magazine locking member; (m) an interference surface or portion of a magazine locking member; (o) a magazine locking member disposed in at least one of a magazine, a corresponding magazine frame and a firearm frame, the interference member retaining the magazine in the firearm frame or magazine frame upon receipt or lack of receipt of a control signal reflected from, or transmitted or modified by, a local or remote communication and/or enabling device; (p) transceiver or transponder circuitry for receiving and/or sensing a control signal from a local or remote communication and/or enabling device, the circuitry being disposed in the magazine and preferably including at least one of a sensor, a Hall Effect sensor, a coil and an antenna; (q) a trigger mechanism disabling or blocking device; (r) a firing pin disabling or blocking device; (s) means for disabling a trigger mechanism or firing pin, the disabling means being disposed in a removable safety magazine and being actuated by receipt or lack of receipt of a control signal reflected from, or transmitted or modified by, a local or remote communication and/or enabling device; (t) one or more microcontrollers, microprocessors, CPUs, decoders, mini-computers or controllers disposed in a removable safety magazine for controlling actuation of at least one firing control mechanism, for controlling communications or sensing of the presence of a remote or local communication and/or enabling device, and/or for controlling charging or recharging of secondary cells contained therein; (u) at least one firing control mechanism; (v) a trigger linkage interference surface or portion; (w) a magazine sleeve; (x) a magazine chassis; (y) a xe2x80x9csmartxe2x80x9d portion of a safety magazine; (z) a xe2x80x9cdumbxe2x80x9d portion of a safety magazine; (aa) an ammunition conveyance mechanism; (bb) an ammunition blocking or interference member; (cc) a magnetic switch; (dd) safety magazine circuitry; (ee) a safety magazine control module; (ff) a safety magazine control module housing; (gg) local or remote external enabling and/or communication device circuitry; (hh) one or more round, coin, cylindrical, prismatic or custom-configured primary or secondary electrochemical cells or batteries arranged electrically in parallel or series, such cells or batteries being disposed in a removable safety magazine, the cells or batteries providing electrical power to the safety magazine; (ii) one or more secondary electrochemical cells or batteries that may be recharged externally or in-situ by conventional direct electrical coupling, inductive coupling or other means; and/or (j) a communication and/or enabling system capable of sensing and/or decoding a color or colors, voice or other biometric data such as fingerprints associated with an authorized user.